The European Union plans to reduce quotas for Ukrainian agricultural products, which will mostly affect corn, honey, sugar and poultry.

Starting June 6, 2025, the European Union will significantly increase import duties on Ukrainian agricultural products and terminate special trade privileges that allowed most Ukrainian goods to be supplied to the EU duty-free, the Financial Times reports.

This decision was made under pressure from Poland and France, where farmers complained about lower prices due to Ukrainian imports.

Although the EU and Ukraine have a free trade agreement, special measures were introduced after the Russian invasion in 2022, which will end on June 6 and be replaced by “transitional measures” until the parties renew the general agreement. However, these measures will significantly reduce duty-free quotas for agricultural products, in particular for corn - from 4.7 million tons to 650 thousand tons per year, for poultry - from 57.1 to 40 thousand tons, and sugar - from 109 to 40.7 thousand tons.

The European Commission confirms that the post-war arrangements will not be extended, and work is currently underway to revise the free trade agreement with Ukraine. "If a decision is not ready by June 6, transitional measures will be applied," an EC representative said.

"This is a very bad signal for Ukraine, as it will take at least until October to resolve the issue," said Bernd Lange, chairman of the European Parliament's trade committee. On Wednesday, representatives of the committee and the European Commission will investigate why the negotiations are delayed, if the June deadline was known for a long time.

The Government of Ukraine believes that if pre-war conditions return, the country will lose 3.5 billion euros per year, which would be a huge step backwards.

Two EU diplomats told the Financial Times that while negotiations are ongoing, the Commission's transitional measures involve dividing the annual duty-free quota into 12 monthly ones to reduce imports.